Imagine you had to talk to a young person in your family about politics and media. Let’s say your nephew or cousin has been absorbing all the “approved” ideas purveyed by our elites. Yes, he once learned sane views from his parents or Christian teachers. But now they’re dissolving under the acid of incessant professional messaging by the Left. It’s that acid that forms the views of his peers, whom he doesn’t want to alienate. So he has every incentive to shift ever leftward, instead of swimming upstream.

Don’t you remember being a teenager or twentysomething? Such pressure is hard to buck, except for those of us who are almost pathological introverts or sheer, instinctive misanthropes. (And there you have the John Zmirak story, folks.)

Our nation is deeply divided now. That’s thanks in large part to the ongoing, well-funded tantrum over Donald Trump’s election. Imagine if a year after Barack Obama’s election, millions of people openly refused to accept his legitimacy as president. If they’d bullied him into appointing an independent counsel staffed by Republican holdovers to investigate his birth certificate. Then used that non-issue to launch a destructive fishing expedition aimed at ruining his campaign staffers. That’s where we are now with Trump. But thousands of media types with interchangeable views have worked to normalize what’s happening: the disenfranchisement of half of America.

John Kasich: Right Wing Extremist

Trump’s gruff persona doesn’t help, but it’s not to blame. The left was every bit as apoplectic over the amiable, disconnected George W. Bush. David Hogg (or his ventriloquist) is savaging the obsessively bipartisan Marco Rubio and John McCain, and trying to drive Laura Ingraham off the air. That’s after she graciously, foolishly apologized for a harmless critical Tweet.

One lesson of the Trump era is this: A conservative can be as erudite as Bill Buckley, as gentle as Orrin Hatch, as logical as Ted Cruz, and as principled as Rand Paul. But stand in the way of the leftist juggernaut, and watch people paint you as some horrid hybrid of Richard Spencer, Ted Nugent, Timothy McVeigh, and Joe McCarthy.

Now try to convey this to someone who has learned that it’s social suicide to stand against the tide. Who is young and impressionable enough to think that he’s wise and independent-minded. (That’s what the media tell him, and he duly accepts it.)

Don’t Confuse Them with Logic

Most of the time, logical debate serves little purpose. Trust me, I’ve tried it for decades. Most people of any age, when confronted with iron-clad reasons that prove that they’re wrong and you’re right, have the same human reaction.

This guy is an [bodily orifice]. He takes glee in tearing down beautiful sentiments with his rigid, Vulcan arguments. I need to warn people to stay away from him. He’s an extremist.

Most of our lives are built not on reasoning but on trust. That’s true way back in childhood. We don’t look up at our parents and deduce that we should stay with them, instead of running away. No child thinks: These two are mammals. They’re driven by instincts or ‘selfish genes’ to reproduce themselves. They’ve already invested significant resources in me. It would be foolish for them to squander that by destroying me, selling me, or eating me. Hence I will remain here with them.

Not one bit of that. We think (or rather, our gut feels) “Mama!” or “Papa!”

Media opinion is totally scripted, censored, and mass produced like the little square burgers at White Castle.

It’s All About Trust

Likewise, in questions of faith, we do employ our reason — often to deal with objections, doubts, or questions. How many people sit down with the Bible, the Q’uran, the Greek myths and Buddhist tomes to decide on their religion? Objectively, the way we’d compare a Chrysler, a Toyota, and a Tesla? Far from it. Most of us learn from our parents their religious beliefs, and either we trust their witness and that of our pastors, or else we don’t. And then we look elsewhere. Based on what? On what we see of the people who preach and practice those faiths. Are they good people, whom we can trust? Then maybe their faith is the reason. We might want to follow it.

So one key to resisting leftist media messaging is to dismantle their ugly stereotypes about people who disagree with them. That’s one part of the reason we should strive to be kind, generous, fair, and open to argument. (Bigger reasons entail our eternal salvation, but that’s for another column.)

Pop that Media Bubble

Another is to challenge, in emotionally powerful ways, the myths that the left purveys. The most powerful one: Progressive ideas are those held by good-hearted, smart, independent-minded, and educated people. They’re also the people who can help you get ahead in this world, since they wield much of its power. Isn’t that a fine coincidence, and a real win-win for young folks?

Great works of literature, film, and other arts are crucial here. But let’s save the discussion of how to get young people reading Huxley, Orwell, Lewis, and Solzhenitsyn — then applying them to life in 2018 — for another time.

No let’s start simple. With a Tweet of an online video. Is there someone you care about, whom you’re trying to peel away from the left’s mandatory respectable consensus? Okay, then. Ask him what he thinks about “fake news.” Does he favor giving billion-dollar corporations with explicit political agendas the power to silence stories which their staff find objectionable? Give him time to offer an answer. Really hear him out.

The Danger to Our Democracy

Then send him this video.
 

 

Of course, it’s dozens of local media personalities earnestly presenting a TV editorial as if it were their own. But they’re all just regurgitating the exact same script. Apart from plugging in “Your Station’s Name and Community’s Name Here,” it’s word for high-minded word.

How many major networks, apart from Fox, do the same thing on a much larger scale? Did any but Fox offer comparable time to the March for Life and the much smaller Women’s March, or the antigun march? How many ask critical questions about the gaping holes in the “Russia collusion” non-story? How many offer conservative commentators as balanced?

Ironically, the network that sent out the script that so many local hosts repeated in the video is the conservative Sinclair Media. So no one’s immune. But leftist policing of opinion occurs on much more significant issues and on a vastly larger scale.

Media opinion is scripted, censored, and mass produced like the little square burgers at White Castle.

Your Own Personal Censor

People with one set of views get ahead on (not driven off of) college newspapers. They’re awarded good grades and hearty recommendations in media classes. They’re hired and rise like little, identical helium balloons. Conservatives hurl ourselves like bricks up in the air, then come whistling back down to earth.

Yes, there’s now open outright censorship, with critics of Islam or immigration simply banned from social media. Or in the EU, imprisoned. Youtube “demonetizes” videos simply for being Christian.

There’s a much more insidious form of censorship. George Orwell warned of people internalizing a set of prefab opinions that are “mainstream” and safe. Then inviting Big Brother to live inside their heads. That’s what it amounts to when millions of people accept George Soros or Mark Zuckerberg as their own personal censor.